Entscheidungsproblem
by eldritcher
Summary: In which Tom Riddle ends up in Bletchley Park. Alan Turing is working day and night to solve German Ciphers but still finds time to try and solve the Riddle. (1943)


Summary - In which Tom Riddle ends up in Bletchley Park. Alan Turing is working day and night to solve German Ciphers but still finds time to try and solve the Riddle.

_—notes— This is set during WWII, at Bletchley Park, which was the central code-breaking site in Britain. Alan Turing was one of the scientists who led the effort._

* * *

_December 1943._

"We have another one," Knox told me, placing a cipher on my desk, breaking me out of my musings.

Reflection had no place here.

"There is always another one," Jeffreys muttered, looking up from his cipher. He looked like a ghost, pale and skeletal.

"You should get some sleep," I told him. "Admiralty somebody will be here for a morale-boosting visit tomorrow."

"Pressure tactics," Jeffreys said sharply.

"Sir, they have brought a new recruit and he is assigned to you directly."

I perked up. We picked the new recruits from the Varsity line, catching them young and patriotic out of Oxford and Cambridge when they graduated. I had been a young catch myself. I felt too tired to resent that now.

"Are you even out of school, boy?" Jeffreys asked incredulously.

I looked at the boy standing before us, for boy indeed he was. Pale, undernourished, but still painfully handsome.

"Which school?" I asked, trying to give him the benefit of doubt. Perhaps he was one of the young prodigies. I had been.

"None that you have heard of, Sir," he said politely.

He had the most remarkable eyes.

Jeffreys cleared his throat. Ah, the man knew of my affliction. He had never made a fuss of it, or tried to report it to anyone. I was grateful but I wondered why he hadn't. Perhaps he merely wanted me alive while the war went on.

I looked at the boy again. He was certainly not the sort that appealed to my affliction. If anything, he looked like a character out of a Dickens novel, asking for food and dressed in rags. His clothes were ragged and well-worn, and looked as if they were held together by chance. Strange that he looked well-groomed despite the general air of poverty he gave off.

"Can you do statistics? Mathematics? What are you good at?"

"I am mostly self-educated, but you will not find me lacking in mathematical knowledge. I have read your thesis."

Jeffreys rolled his eyes. We had too many of these children coming to us, claiming to know everything about cryptanalysis, claiming to have read our work, and in the end leaving the place with crushed patriotism and lessened self-worth.

"What did you think of it?" I asked, prepared for the praise and adulation that these children easily gave.

They were well-intentioned, but ill-prepared. There was a reason why we plucked off our recruits from the Varsity line. Oxford and Cambridge provided trained mathematicians.

"I liked the Church approach better, but I mean no offense," the boy said. "I found the lambda calculus more formalised whereas your proof was more intuitive."

Jeffreys looked at the boy with new interest, as I did I.

"What is your name?"

"Tom Marvolo Riddle."

I handed him the cipher Knox had brought to us earlier. Riddle took it eagerly, bestowed a tired smile upon us, and made himself scarce.

"He is no hero-worshipper, at least. Even if he proves to be bad at ciphers, and he likely will be, he will at least be useful for other things," Jeffreys said.

I did not ask what other things might be. Instead I repeated my suggestion that he might retire. Thankfully, the man succumbed and I was left alone at my desk to contemplate sixteen-year-olds that walked in to duty, all world-wise and patriotic long before they should have needed to be. In 1938, I began working at Bletchley Park. One might say my first day at work decided the rest of it.

* * *

_**Entscheidungsproblem **(Decision problem) - Does there exist an algorithm for deciding whether or not a specific mathematical assertion does or does not have a proof?_

It was all about German. I had no love for the classical education they strove to feed me at the public school, but it had led to my fascination with the language. The guttural sounds, the structure, the depth and nuances, the lack of artifice - all of it reminded of pure mathematics and formalism.

There was Einstein and his theory of relativity. I soared when I understood. There are moments in a man's life that make him grateful to be born. That had been one of them. Such beauty, such power - to understand it was to share in the discovery, a secret moment of intimacy as cherished as a kiss from a beloved.

Then came the Hilbert question. _Entscheidungsproblem_. Everything changed. As a starved wolf feasting on lamb, I began attacking. Hungry, desperate and needy, I began searching. I was a wreck, floating on the high seas in anguish as I sought. The answer had been in German too, as Godel came to me with his proofs on computational limits.

Now it was all again about that fate which entwined me with that language and its people. Now I sat at my desk in Bletchley park trying to decode ciphers that were handed to me twice a day. Where once I had taken pleasure in solving the problems that came from that land for basking in the purity of mathematics, now I was called upon to do to prevent slaughter.

There were too many of us at Bletchley Park, but none too skilled. They were desperate, trying to bring in anyone who had shown a modicum of talent. In dingy rooms, chess champions, mathematicians, cross-word experts, historians and engineers worked worked nearly sixteen hours every day, never leaving the place for years as they feverishly tried to unscramble ciphers. We stayed in cottages and hastily constructed huts. There was no frivolity. There were only sirens and ciphers.

"May I?" The boy suited action to word as he pushed the stale cup of coffee to safety from where it had been perilously close to my elbow.

"Riddle."

"That would be me."

I did not know where he found his energy from. I certainly had none left and carried on merely because of what lay at stake. He was younger. Perhaps that was it. He had taken to Bletchley Park rather badly (the food and accommodation was nothing to write home about), and was thinner than he had been. Waif. Handsome waif, though.

"You haven't been sleeping well, have you?" I asked, suddenly overcome by responsibility. Somebody should be responsible for all these children who were offering themselves to the cause of patriotism.

"I am not fond of cramped spaces. It affects me, but I will get used to it," he replied, looking unconcerned.

"Where is your family?"

Was he from the country? Nobody raised in London would be unused to cramped spaces.

"Scotland," he said.

Now there was unease in his eyes. Had he run away from home to serve the country? He wouldn't be the first, or the last, to do so. Foolish children, all of them. Was he lying about his family?

"Your words bleed Cockney," I remarked.

"I spent my childhood in the East End," he said, looking irritated by the observation. "It lingers even though my foster parent has indulged me with the best of tutoring."

This was becoming more and more of a Dickens tale. Oliver Twist.

"Brownlow," I muttered, thinking of the man who had taken pity on Oliver Twist.

"Actually, he is more of a Mad Hatter," Riddle said wryly.

There was a depth of sadness in his eyes. For someone so restrained of expression, he had such expressive eyes. So the boy's foster parent was alive. Good. I never knew if these children had lost their parents in the war. I did not usually speak with them outside the confines of work, but I felt responsible for Riddle. He had made no friends, kept to himself, and could be found wriggled into the little spaces of winter sunlight that filtered in through our heavily barricaded windows with books. The books were a surprise. He read hungrily. He read texts on linguistics, mathematics, fairy tales, bodice rippers. He read anything he could get his greedy hands on.

"Did you really find Church's work more fascinating?" I asked.

It had bothered me ever since the first conversation. It had begun to bother me more after Riddle had solved the first cipher he had been handed.

"I prefer structure," Riddle said thoughtfully, clasping his hands as he went to stand by the window. A swathe of moonlight painted him as a Greek statue pale.

"Yet your codebreaking works by intuition," I pointed out.

I had wondered about that. He did not have any system or pattern when it came to solving ciphers. It was…magical to behold his leaps of thought.

"There is more than intuition," he assured me, now smiling.

It was his real smile, the one which curved his lips gently and softened his mien. There were other smiles, handed out when girls tried to take interest, or when Jeffreys made a particularly unkind remark, or when boys tried to bully him. The last worried me. We had none of us any outlet here. Teenage boys cooped up here found it more difficult than the rest of us, and they took out their rage and frustration on those weaker. Riddle was physically delicate. I had heard them calling him names. He had not been affected though. Where others might have been beaten up, he had been left well alone. I wondered how he had managed to make them do that.

"My foster parent is a brilliant man," Riddle said, perhaps taking my silence as a demand for further information. "While his method might have been mad, there was a method to his madness. His tutoring has given a strong knack for structured problem solving."

"He sounds like a fascinating man," I remarked.

I had taken the time to put out discreet enquiries after the third cipher Riddle had solved. Where had this boy come from? There was a family of Riddles in a sleepy village called Little Hangleton, but the boy had said that he had been fostered in Scotland by a brilliant eccentric.

"You might like him," Riddle said.

Now this smile was one I hadn't seen. It looked mischievous. I stared at him, wondering what he meant. Surely he would not mean…No! Nobody but Jeffreys knew of that. There was pity in the boy's eyes.

"No!" I shouted, enraged by what he knew. How had he known? Had Jeffreys been talking? In a scarce tenth of a second, my mind conjured images of disgrace and imprisonment. It was easy to conjure, because it rested ever-present in my mind hidden away only by the mask of ciphers and the war. The boy hissed. His voice sounded remarkably serpentine when he hissed, I dully noticed.

"I noticed it only because I knew what to look for. There is nothing to worry about," he said softly. "I respect and admire my foster father greatly, for his brilliance and courage. I respect you too."

So he would not crush me. Yet he had power now, as Jeffreys did. What either of them knew could ruin everything I had accomplished, everything that I held dear, and see me in prison. Unlike Jeffreys, Riddle seemed to be mostly uncaring of what others did, as long as it did not involve him. The boy loved his foster much was clear. There was scarce anything that screamed patriotism in his speech or ways. What had brought him here then?

"Someone died," he said quietly, dropping his gaze.

His voice had turned hoarse with emotion. Not his foster father. He had spoken of the man in the present tense. A beloved with whom he had exchanged letters and sweet kisses on the cheeks, perhaps? The bombs did not distinguish between the young and the old, the rich and the poor, or the lovers and the unloved.

"Avenging?" I wondered.

Many joined the war effort to avenge their dead, loved ones. I despaired when I saw children doing that. We taught them the wrong lessons. Why would they die for us when they could live for us?

"I am not a cipher," Riddle said, looking mildly pleased all the same by the fact that I was trying to decipher his motivations.

He did like attention and preened if the attention was in the form of a grudging comment of approval from Jeffreys about a code he had broken.

"Feel free to tell me if one of my theories is correct," I suggested, with little hope.

He was masterful at noticing and observing, while giving nothing away. Surely he would not consent to indulge my curiosity, and acted as an oracle with 'yes' or 'no' answers as I rattled one theory after another. I wanted to know the story. I had never been able to resist an unsolved challenge. I felt enthused, by the prospect of a new mystery, in a way that the ciphers failed to fascinate me anymore.

"Oh, but you proved it yourself," he said laughing, his body quivering as he did so. His laughter, true and melodious, was a hymn of glory in the dreary night. I hadn't heard laughter in this place in a long time. "Entscheidungsproblem", he said, in a not quite drawl, taking time to caress the word before it passed his lips.

The language suited him. A measure of emotion must have flickered on my face for he looked disconcerted immediately. The unguarded surprise, fleeting, made him seem younger. He was young. I found that my palms were perspiring, as it often happened when I was embarrassed or angry or when the affliction took hold of me, as it had now done. Horrified and shamed, I sat there watching the perspiration on my open palms, unwilling to look up at him again while he made his judgement.

"It is nearly four in the morning. I should try to sleep," he said in an uninflected tone. "Goodnight, sir."

"Look lively," Jeffreys said, as he passed my desk.

I had spent all night there, staring at my palms, and thoughts haunted by the conversation with Riddle. I sighed and made my way out. Perhaps I would take a walk to the railway station and clear my head. Otherwise, I would get nothing done today. That would not do. As I meandered towards the station, regretting that I had not dressed warm for the winter outside which I had forgotten about after days spent at my desk, I heard the footsteps someone following me. I was in no state to deal with conversation. Guilt was writ large upon my face, I was sure, and anyone who would look could see.

When I set my eyes upon my pursuer, I knew he was no admiralty. I knew who he was. Eccentric, but brilliant, Riddle had said.

"The Mad Hatter," I said softly.

The man did not look put out. Instead, he beamed in approval and came forward to give me a bow that looked more appropriate to Buckingham than Bletchley.

"Mr. Turing," he said, and his voice carried quiet strength that overcame the garishness of his velveteen clothes.

"I will call the boy," I offered.

Riddle was unlikely to be up and about. He liked to sleep in. We had tried to make him adapt to the sixteen-hour work day the rest of us kept, but he had simply refused saying that his brain needed sleep if it was to be of any use and that it was unlikely a few hours stolen from his sleep would save the country. He was remarkably unpatriotic.

"That is not necessary," Dumbledore said. "Tom loves his late mornings."

"Why is Riddle here?" I asked.

Many matters were pressing, but this was the riddle that had refused to let me be ever since the boy had broken the first cipher. The smile slipped off Dumbledore's face and I regretted asking. Happy men were rare. Making them unhappy should be declared a crime.

"The war took away someone he cared about," Dumbledore said quietly. "We said things that could not be unsaid, not immediately, and then parted ways in anger and sadness."

I remembered the quiet desperation and the rags when Riddle had first come to Bletchley Park.

"He speaks highly of you," I told the man before me.

I could see that he meant the boy well, that he meant most everyone well. He did not look the sort that beat up children when they spoke up. Riddle himself was not quarrelsome, if only because he cared not for other opinions and tended to stay out of arguments solely because of disinterest.

"I speak highly of him too," Dumbledore assured me wryly, but a faint sparkle had been restored to his eyes by my assurance.

It mattered, then. I felt glad to have done some good. The ciphers helped, but it was pleasing to see the results of good deeds instead of hearing assurances that I would be considered for a wartime services honour after all this ended.

"He is doing well," I said. "Late nights, late mornings, took to cryptanalysis like he was born to do it. I suspect he was. Very talented, but unsystematic. He says you are to be held accountable for that."

"I am afraid my mathematical background was lacking in formal training," Dumbledore regretted. "He had ideas of enrolling for a mathematics degree at King's College after the war."

King's College, Cambridge. My alma mater. It would suit Riddle, if only he could rein in his impatience. I did not see in him the patience for the purely academic. He was a creature of impulsive intuition as much as he was a creature of brilliance.

"Good morning," chirped a boy well-slept. I envied him the sleep.

"Hello, Tom," Dumbledore greeted him.

They were looking at each other warily, despite their bland and adequate greetings. I could see where many of Riddle's mannerisms had taken influence from. I suppressed a smile.

"Have you come to fetch me home?" Riddle asked, finally, breaking the silence.

Perhaps they had had these wars of silence and waiting in Scotland. Riddle, I imagined, must have broken the silence each time. Dumbledore was a stork, wise and patient, a still pool of calm.

"No," Dumbledore said quickly, as if he had wished to assent instead. Both of them looked regretful."I wish to take you out for the day, though. We could go to London."

"It is not safe," I pointed out.

I did not want the boy harmed or endangered unnecessarily. I was responsible for the children who worked for me, after all, and my concern had nothing to do with the boy's eyes or his slender form that glowed flush with youth in the pale winter sun.

"I know a place," Tom offered quickly.

He was clearly eager to speak with his foster parent despite the uncertainty that cloaked them both. I had not seen two men as eager as these two to forgive each other their words spoken in argument.

"Bradwell Abbey," Tom said. "Beautiful place. They had a Benedictine Priory there."

Dumbledore nodded and removed his thick, purple scarf. Tom looked offended by the fabric by bore it with grace when the scarf was wrapped around his neck.

"Get your winter clothes," Dumbledore said. "Only then."

Tom rolled his eyes in a perfect rendering of adolescent male. That made my affliction come to the fore again. I was glad that the boy would be out of my hair all day. At least, I would have time to deal with that cipher that had proven to be near unbreakable. Perhaps it would also take my mind off the riddle that was this boy.

"Jeffreys told me that Enigma is waiting for you," Riddle said, being helpful no doubt because he wanted me gone.

He looked eager and uncertain as he kept his eyes firmly on our visitor, as if worried he would suddenly pop out of existence.

Suddenly, fear seized me and took control of my voice, for I could not find any other explanation for why I asked, "You will return, won't you?"

Riddle looked disconcerted, as he had done the previous night. Dumbledore was smiling and his eyes were alit with awareness. He knew then of the affliction and its obsession with a boy. He knew and found it amusing. At least, I knew now whom to blame for Riddle's unflappable nature.

"Tom?" Dumbledore queried gently.

Riddle shook his head and told me, in a voice laden with mischief, "Only if you promise not to solve the Enigma while I am away."

"I am not inverting matrices until you get back," I promised him. "What good is an assistant for if not inverting matrices?"

"Perhaps to break polyalphabetic substitution ciphers," Riddle suggested. "Check your permutations, or I might be forced to invert matrices that lead to nothing."

I frowned at him, wondering what he had meant by that. Surely, he had not seen the work done so far by the Polish mathematicians which had proven to be the basis of our own work in trying to decode the Enigma at Bletchley. In 1940, the old decoding method had stopped working. We knew that not much would have been changed, and that the manual operators would still be as prone to security flaws as they ever had been, but we had been unable to decode the cipher text. There was something glaringly obvious that we had not seen yet. Dumbledore was looking at Riddle with great fondness now, reminding me of how my father had looked at me when I had cycled all the way to school on a day of public strike so that I would not miss my mathematics class.

"What was it that you taught him again?" I asked, not really expecting an answer. Both of them were good at deflecting questions they did not see fi to answer.

"Arithmancy," Dumbledore said, eyes twinkling.

"What is that?"

Riddle said, "It is nowhere as formalized as Church's lambda calculus. A tad loose, but quite useful, as your thesis on the Entscheidungsproblem is."

I decided to let that pass. I had seen evidence over the past many weeks that he liked my work just fine. He did love to taunt me with the Church thesis in a bid to get a rise out of me.

"Get your winter clothes," Dumbledore suggested. "We should leave and let Mr. Turing get back to his work."

Riddle nodded and walked away. I could feel Dumbledore watching me as I watched the boy.

"He is very perceptive," Dumbledore said quietly.

"I know," I whispered, feeling the guilt of the affliction return, as I remembered the previous night's conversation with Riddle.

"You don't have to worry, of course," Dumbledore continued. "He is nonjudgmental."

It was not his judgement regarding my affliction that I worried about now. It was his judgement regarding my affliction for him that I feared. Would he stop his rare smiles directed at me when I spoke passionately about a cipher yet unsolved, about Hilbert's challenges, about the universal machines of computation that would help us surmount the challenges of establishing formalism in computer science?

"Ah!" Dumbledore said. I looked at him. His gaze was kind, but sorrowful.

"I apologise. I will never…"

"Of course, Mr. Turing, I know that Tom is safe here. In fact, he might be safer here than in our own world right now. I will fetch him once a threat has been dealt with. Nobody knows he is here. It is a good thing, perhaps, that he choose to come here. The work keeps him occupied, his fascination with your methods keeps him interested and his safety is assured."

"No place is safe. Not from the bombs."

"There are other evils."

Dumbledore looked regretful when he spoke that. Clearly, this evil he spoke of was personal. What had happened? Why was it that Riddle particularly was in danger?

"As far as our world is concerned, the boy is dead," Dumbledore said softly. "He is as safe as he can be. Some may not believe it. They claim that Tom is an expert at survival and could not have died. However, even they will not know to look for him in Bletchley Park."

"What would he have died in?"

"An ambush," Dumbledore replied. The weight of his years were stamped upon his brow. "My brother died so that Tom could escape."

"Riddle is bearing up well," I assured him, not knowing what else to say.

Children were resilient. They had survived so much so far in the war.

"I am relieved to hear that," Dumbledore told me gratefully. Then he diverged, rekindling the amusement in his eyes again by saying, "Perhaps the joy of your company might have had something to do with it. Tom does seem taken with you."

I was taken with the boy. Was this man mocking me? I stood there, tongue-tied, wondering how to reply.

"I meant it," Dumbledore said, now with solemnity. "Tom does not choose his associations lightly. Nor does he tease them or feel comfortable enough to slip into Cockney around them. If you were to take an old man's advice, Mr. Turing, I would ask you to not fear. Perhaps, when your war is over, when Tom is old enough, you could come visit us. He would enjoy teaching you Arithmancy. He would enjoy meeting you as an equal, as a man."

The boy returned then. I stood, benumbed, as I tried to process what the old man had told me. Cheeks flushed and grey eyes warm with joy, Riddle bid me goodbye for the day.

I remembered, then, from the paperwork that he had filled in, the occasion.

"Happy Birthday, Tom," I wished him.

It was the first time I had called him by his first name. He looked surprised, but took in stride, and smiled at me again.

I had despised the classical texts they had made us read in public school, preferring the sanity and structure of mathematics. Yet, I found that the stories in the classics were not exaggerating, as I realised later that day that I had a grin on my face, a spring in my step and a general feeling of goodwill towards the entire world whenever I thought of Riddle smiling at me, eyes warm and cheeks flushed.

When the war was over, when he had grown up, when I had finally come to terms with the affliction and stopped driving myself to madness over its incurability… Perhaps it was time to look at the permutations of the Enigma cipher machine again. I wanted this war over.

* * *

_May, 1954_

"What have you done?"

I knew that voice. It had been the voice of my Beatrice. Cold and beautiful, my Beatrice, though a man, had been my guide. I had waited until the war was over. I had waited until he had grown up. He had listened to my fervent declaration of love, then told me that while he admired me greatly and while he valued my profession of love greatly, he wanted more time to come to terms with everything.

I had run away then, tail tucked between my legs, like the coward I was, back to London. It was a rejection, I told myself. It was a rejection no matter how gentle it had been.

Dumbledore had written to me and advised patience. He believed that everything would eventually be set right, but implored me to do nothing rash while Tom thought upon the matter. I did not heed the old man.

In East End, there were places where a man could go to, and have his affliction sated, for no more than a few pounds. It had cost me only a few pounds in the beginning. Then it cost me Riddle, who had come to London to speak with me and had somehow unerringly found me in a carnal embrace with another man. And then, it had cost me everything.

Now here I was, being a coward again, having chosen chemical castration over imprisonment. At least, even if I had no affliction, I would still have my mathematics. Even if I was disgraced, I would still work from my home and perhaps the world might forget me soon enough.

"Alan, what have you done?"

His voice was hoarse with emotion. He pitied me. Riddle was a brave man. I doubted that he would have chosen what I had chosen. He might have chosen prison. He might have chosen to topple the lawmakers and make a few laws of his own.

"Stop the self-hatred, at least now!" he commanded.

I looked up from my bed. He stood there, rage smoldering in his gaze, the fingers of his left hand clenched around one of the bedposts, his right hand stretched out towards my prone form.

"Why have you come?"

I did not want him to see me like this. I did not want anyone to see me like this. The increases in body fat, the discoloured lips, the changes in my body - I had wanted nobody to know. Of course, Riddle would make sure that he was there to see, just as he had once made sure to wait patiently until I had finished my activity with the East End rentboy. He had not interrupted or drawn attention to himself. I had not seen him until I had heard his cold voice chastising me for paying so little for so much pleasure. Then he had come forward and pressed a few more pounds into the rent boy's hands, saying that it could not have been easy to work for a man who was so driven by guilt and self-hatred.

I had not seen Riddle again, until this day, when he stood by my bed taking in what I had been reduced to.

"Alan-"

A sob escaped me. What had it taken to call me by my first name? What would I not have given for this earlier? Now, at my lowest, at the end, he had come in taunting me with this precious gift of my name caressed by his voice.

"Stop it!" he shouted.

He seemed to have lost patience with me, for he grasped me by the shoulders and forced me to sit up. How had he gained such strength in his slender form? How had I grown so weak?

"You can have everything!" he said. His eyes were glittering with dark promises. "Everything that you wanted. Let me take you away. I can."

"No!" I exclaimed, horrified at the consequences of such treason. I dared not wonder why he would be willing to do that. "They will hunt you."

"They won't," he said dismissively. "If you permit me, I can take you away. I can set you back to rights."

Had he gone mad?

"Alan, please," he said.

The madness in his eyes gave way to quiet hope as he spoke those words. I knew that beseeching was not part of his nature. Yet, he had done it. I knew then that he meant everything he had said. He would take me away. He would set me back to rights. He would let me have him. He would beg me however I craved as long as he could take me away from this pit.

"Yes," I whispered.

Relief washed his features. He nodded shakily and then sat down on the bed beside me. For long moments, there was silence. This was a silence as comfortable as the long nights in Bletchley working side-by-side had been.

"I brought you a gift," he said, softly, as if afraid to break the silence.

I looked up at him. He stooped over to pick something up. He handed a neatly wrapped package to me. It was heavy. Before I had even torn open the wrappings, I knew what it could be. Sure enough, after I had demolished the wrap, there I saw a Navy Enigma machine sitting on the bed.

"It is a 1925 model," he said.

"I know. Funkschlüssel."

"Funkschlüssel C," he corrected me.

Yes, the radio cipher C. Against all laws of chemistry, despite the drugs that were supposed to inhibit my affliction, it surfaced again, drawn greedily by Riddle caressing German.

"I will set this up. You will send a message tomorrow evening when you are ready. We will leave then. Take nothing but what you truly need. We must travel light. I hope to reach my foster father's house in Carmarthenshire by Friday."

I nodded assent. He smiled wanly.

"Are you real? Are you truly here? Are you Beatrice?"

"Here I thought that you despised the classics. I wish you had chosen a better time to get acquainted with Dante, though," he murmured. "I will read it aloud to you, if you wish, on the beach adjoining the house. You will like the locale. It is quiet and everybody lets you be. My foster father has taken to fishing trout and salmon in the Towy. He has become exceedingly good at the affair. I have spent days sitting there, waiting for some gullible fish to take my bait, only to find that I have nothing to show for my patience at the end of the day, while he politely asked me if I would mind fish for the next couple of days, because his catch had been generous, and oh! bless the salmon. It is galling and I have grown sick of eating fish. Perhaps you could come see the log house I have built in the lower reaches of the Cambrian Mountains. It is a place of solitude and silence. I have stocked it with books and aren't you curious to find if I have deigned to keep a copy of your thesis? I assure you that I have a copy of Church's lambda calculus paper. Now, that is a beautiful proof."

"Mine is good too," I protested, slipping into the tale he had woven, into the land he had spoken of.

"You will have to convince me, perhaps over tea and scones next week."

I was still staring at him, disbelieving and shocked. Was he here? Had I been reading Dante until my brain had started conjuring images of my Beatrice?

Riddle smiled and it was that old, rare smile. I was watching it, bewitched, when I saw him swoop, and then felt him press his thin lips on my cracked, discoloured ones.

"Until tomorrow," he said, withdrawing, eyes bright with mischief and something else.

"Yes," I whispered.

I sat for a long time that night wondering about Riddle and his decision to grant me a kiss. For the first time in years, I felt whole and wholesome. I think I wept a lot. Then I hunted down the old copy of Yeats that my father had liked to read. I found what I had been looking for.

Painstakingly, I ciphered the "Lake Isle of Innisfree".

_I will arise and go now, go to Innisfree._

I had already found my Innisfree today. It was not the log cabin that Riddle had spoken of. It was Riddle himself.

_And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow._

I brought the revolver out. So many nights had I spent staring at it, wishing that I had possessed the courage to end it all. Now I had the courage and it had been given to me in the form of a kiss. I touched my lips and knew that I would weep if I lingered on the memory long.

_ I hear it in the deep heart's core. _

—-

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Notes: 1) Enigma was a cipher machine used heavily during WWII by the German military. Turing was one of the mathematicians who led the effort to break the Enigma cipher. He submitted to chemical castration when he was found guilty of homosexuality. The inquest found his cause of death as suicide. 2) Bletchley Park was the headquarters of Britain's Government Code and Cypher School. The Bletchley Park railway station was on the Varsity line between Oxford and Cambridge. 3) Radio Cipher C - Funkschlüssel C - was the first Enigma cipher machine used by the German Navy. 4) Lake Isle of Innisfree - a poem by William Butler Yeats. 5) Carmathenshire - located in Wales. The Towy is a river flowing through the county. The Cambrian Mountains are to the north. 6) Church - a mathematician of lambda calculus fame, who had also proved Hilbert's decidability problem. 7) Beatrice - Dante's muse and unrequited love.

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I know this is horribly weird and I'm sorry for inflicting it on anyone who reads it, but I'd love to hear what you think of it. I guess it can be read both as a random piece of weirdness or as if it is set in the Eldritch universe which is about weird fostering relationships between Albus and Tom Riddle.


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